Thursday, March 13, 2014

Male Breast Cancer (Searcher)

Week 9 covered the topic of cancer, with a special focus on breast cancer. Now, breast cancer is often associated with females, which makes sense at the surface level - girls have breasts, ergo they are susceptible to breast cancer. As it turns out, though, males can get breast cancer, too. Developing breast cancer is a very distressing ordeal no matter what sex someone is, but if a doctor diagnosed me, a male, with breast cancer, I would feel a certain demasculinizing distress along with the distress of knowing that I have cancer.Psychological Distress in Men With Breast Cancer explores the psychological distress in men with breast cancer. It details a study of 161 men living with breast cancer through surveys. "Specific aims of the survey were to examine the prevalence of anxiety, depressive symptoms, and cancer-specific distress in men with breast cancer, and concurrent associations between clinical, demographic, and psychosocial factors and distress in these men."(quote found in the introduction)The article concludes that men want more gender-specific information about living with breast cancer. The article also emphasizes the importance of increasing the awareness of male breast cancer.Note: The article admits that the study was methodologically limited.The article can be found through this link: http://jco.ascopubs.org/content/24/1/95.full